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  1. Stackups
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  4. Web Servers
  5. Apache Tomcat vs Passenger vs Puma

Apache Tomcat vs Passenger vs Puma

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Passenger
Passenger
Stacks1.4K
Followers298
Votes199
GitHub Stars5.1K
Forks557
Puma
Puma
Stacks1.2K
Followers265
Votes20
GitHub Stars7.8K
Forks1.5K
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Stacks16.9K
Followers12.6K
Votes201
GitHub Stars8.0K
Forks5.3K

Apache Tomcat vs Passenger vs Puma: What are the differences?

<Apache Tomcat, Passenger, and Puma are all popular server software used to deploy web applications. Here, we will highlight the key differences between Apache Tomcat, Passenger, and Puma.>

  1. Architecture: Apache Tomcat is a Java-based application server primarily used to deploy Java Servlets and JSPs, while Passenger and Puma are both application servers for Ruby web applications. Passenger is known for its seamless integration with Nginx, and Puma is a concurrent web server for Ruby apps.

  2. Supported Languages: Apache Tomcat is designed to support Java-based applications, whereas Passenger and Puma are tailored for Ruby applications, offering features and optimizations specific to the Ruby programming language.

  3. Performance: Passenger and Puma are known for their high concurrency and fast request handling capabilities, making them a preferred choice for high-traffic Ruby web applications. In contrast, Apache Tomcat may not offer the same level of performance optimization for Ruby applications.

  4. Configuration: Apache Tomcat requires a more complex configuration setup compared to Passenger and Puma, which offer more streamlined and user-friendly configuration options. Passenger integrates seamlessly with Nginx, simplifying the configuration process.

  5. Community Support: Apache Tomcat has a large community of Java developers who offer support and contribute to its development. Passenger and Puma, being more Ruby-specific, have a smaller but highly specialized community that caters to the needs of Ruby developers.

  6. Scalability: Passenger and Puma are built with scalability in mind, allowing for easy scaling of Ruby applications, while Apache Tomcat may require more manual intervention and setup for scaling purposes.

In Summary, Apache Tomcat is geared towards Java-based applications, while Passenger and Puma are optimized for Ruby applications with faster performance and easier configuration options.

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Advice on Passenger, Puma, Apache Tomcat

Hari
Hari

Mar 3, 2020

Needs advice

I was in a situation where I have to configure 40 RHEL servers 20 each for Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat server. My task was to

  1. configure LVM with required logical volumes, format and mount for HTTP and Tomcat servers accordingly.
  2. Install apache and tomcat.
  3. Generate and apply selfsigned certs to http server.
  4. Modify default ports on Tomcat to different ports.
  5. Create users on RHEL for application support team.
  6. other administrative tasks like, start, stop and restart HTTP and Tomcat services.

I have utilized the power of ansible for all these tasks, which made it easy and manageable.

419k views419k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Passenger
Passenger
Puma
Puma
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat

Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex.

Unlike other Ruby Webservers, Puma was built for speed and parallelism. Puma is a small library that provides a very fast and concurrent HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby web applications.

Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
5.1K
GitHub Stars
7.8K
GitHub Stars
8.0K
GitHub Forks
557
GitHub Forks
1.5K
GitHub Forks
5.3K
Stacks
1.4K
Stacks
1.2K
Stacks
16.9K
Followers
298
Followers
265
Followers
12.6K
Votes
199
Votes
20
Votes
201
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 43
    Nginx integration
  • 36
    Great for rails
  • 21
    Fast web server
  • 19
    Free
  • 15
    Lightweight
Cons
  • 0
    Cost (some features require paid/pro)
Pros
  • 4
    Free
  • 3
    Convenient
  • 3
    Easy
  • 2
    Multithreaded
  • 2
    First-class support for WebSockets
Cons
  • 0
    Uses `select` (limited client count)
Pros
  • 79
    Easy
  • 72
    Java
  • 49
    Popular
  • 1
    Spring web
Cons
  • 3
    Blocking - each http request block a thread
  • 2
    Easy to set up
Integrations
NGINX
NGINX
Python
Python
Ruby
Ruby
Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Node.js
Node.js
Meteor
Meteor
No integrations availableNo integrations available

What are some alternatives to Passenger, Puma, Apache Tomcat?

NGINX

NGINX

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

Apache HTTP Server

Apache HTTP Server

The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.

Unicorn

Unicorn

Unicorn is an HTTP server for Rack applications designed to only serve fast clients on low-latency, high-bandwidth connections and take advantage of features in Unix/Unix-like kernels. Slow clients should only be served by placing a reverse proxy capable of fully buffering both the the request and response in between Unicorn and slow clients.

Microsoft IIS

Microsoft IIS

Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.

Gunicorn

Gunicorn

Gunicorn is a pre-fork worker model ported from Ruby's Unicorn project. The Gunicorn server is broadly compatible with various web frameworks, simply implemented, light on server resources, and fairly speedy.

Jetty

Jetty

Jetty is used in a wide variety of projects and products, both in development and production. Jetty can be easily embedded in devices, tools, frameworks, application servers, and clusters. See the Jetty Powered page for more uses of Jetty.

lighttpd

lighttpd

lighttpd has a very low memory footprint compared to other webservers and takes care of cpu-load. Its advanced feature-set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) make lighttpd the perfect webserver-software for every server that suffers load problems.

Swoole

Swoole

It is an open source high-performance network framework using an event-driven, asynchronous, non-blocking I/O model which makes it scalable and efficient.

Caddy

Caddy

Caddy 2 is a powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS written in Go.

Cowboy

Cowboy

Cowboy aims to provide a complete HTTP stack in a small code base. It is optimized for low latency and low memory usage, in part because it uses binary strings. Cowboy provides routing capabilities, selectively dispatching requests to handlers written in Erlang.

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